We all have heard about the Aaadhar card data being leaked out in India. Around 7.82 crores Indian’s Aadhar data was compromised. Now there is an entry of another similar action and this time, the culprit is the Indian Government itself. The government of India has sold the driving license data for money.
According to Trak.in, the Minister of Road Transport and Highway “Nitin Gadkari” has said that the driving license and vehicle registration has been sold for 65 crores. This statement was passed during a session of Lok Sabha when an MP(Member of Parliament) of Congress party “Husain Dalwa” asked a question related to it.
Ministry of Road and Transport is also known as The Vahan and Sarathi has maintained a huge database of 40 crore datasets. These datasets include data related to driving licenses, vehicles information & registration data and much more. This database is called the “Centralized National Registry” and the “National Informatics Centre” has the responsibility to maintain it.
The 40 crore datasets which were sold included 25 crores datasets related to vehicle registrations and the lest 15 crore datasets were related to driving licenses. These datasets have been sold to 87 private companies and 32 government firms.
The “Bulk Data Sharing Policy & Procedure” states that the data maintained by the Ministry of Road and Transport can be sold to anyone who is ready to pay for it. This policy enabled the Indian government to sell the driving license data and generate revenue from it.
The private firms have to pay Rs 3 crore for the financial year 2019-20 and the educational institution need to only pay Rs 5 lakh for this, But if any educational institution uses the data for commercial purposes then it has to pay Rs 3 cored for doing it. the big point is that we are still not sure that these data have been sold with or without the concern of the users.
